A blockchain may be used as a public ledger to store any type of information. Although, primarily used for financial transactions, A blockchain can store any type of information including assets (i.e., products, packages, services, status, etc.). A blockchain may be used to securely store any type of information in its immutable ledger. Decentralized consensus is different from the traditional centralized consensus, such as when one central database used to rule transaction validity. A decentralized scheme transfers authority and trusts to a decentralized network and enables its nodes to continuously and sequentially record their transactions on a public “block,” creating a unique “chain” referred to as a blockchain. Cryptography, via hash codes, is used to secure the authentication of the transaction source and removes the need for a central intermediary.
Most blockchain implementations are designed to avoid linkability of the information contained in the respective transactions. This has a negative impact on the performance of every search an authorized entity could perform on the ledger. The simplest mechanism an authorized entity has at its disposal to search for a value in the ledger is by going over the whole chain of blocks decrypting each element. Once the decrypted block information is accessed, the authorized party must verify if the element it is searching for actually exists. This type of searching could be time-consuming and burdensome depending on the size of the ledger.